Acknow Ack nowled led gement gem ent s
Like the site of a building, the boundaries of a b ook are very difcult to delineate. The germ of Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade has been present in all my past writings on Le Corbusier and in my enjoyment of literature and lm, but it was Henriette Mueller-Stahl of Birkhäuser who helped me to evolve the proposal into reality. Tim Benton and Caroline Maniaque gave me support with various funding bids. Paul Richens of the University of Bath, with his typ ical generosity and style, introduced me to Maureen Thomas of Camb ridge University’s Moving Image Studio (as it was then) who – together wi th Ludvig Lohse, Monika Koeck, Richard Koeck, Philip Prager and Terence Wright – provided us – then students and staff of the Bath MArch – with a revelatory introduction to the possibilities of lm making. One of these students, Dan Moor, then fed me with further books as he continued his research in this area, as did another Bath student Anthony Bowles who also gave me important inspiration at a critical moment. At the same time Dyfed Grifths and Martin Gledhill bought me time to write by being, as ever, the most generous and tolerant of teachers.
Anne Sam uel was very good company while I recorded case study buildings in Paris. Michel R ichard of the Fondation Le Corbusier gave me access to the Maison La Roche whilst it was being renovated and Arnaud Dercelles helped me with the p rovision of illustrations. Once again Denise Leitao took me around the Maison du Brésil, helping me pick chives from its extraordinary roofscape.
Funding for the use of images came from the British Academy. In Cardiff Stephen Kite allowed me use of his photographs of the Usine Duval which was inaccessible to visitors while I was writing this text. Sam Austin, Steve Coombs and E d Wainwright worked on the production of the drawings. Marie Gastinel Jones once again helped me with translation and my negotiations with the francophone world. Adam Sharr made extremely useful comments about the manuscript at various stages in its production as did P eter Blundell Jones at the University of Shefeld School of A rchitecture. It was here that Peter Lathey helped me to gather together illustrations. Indeed all the staff at Shefeld were extremely tolerant and supportive in enabling me to nish this book just at the point at which I was precipitated into Headship of this extraordinarily innovative and exciting school. To all these people I owe my thanks.
It is important here to mention Sarah Menin who worked with me on our rst b ook and who would be outshining us all now if circumstances had been different. And nally, my centre of gravity, my family without which none of this would have been possible.
Shefeld 2010 2010
Acknow Ack nowled led gement gem ent s
Like the site of a building, the boundaries of a b ook are very difcult to delineate. The germ of Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade has been present in all my past writings on Le Corbusier and in my enjoyment of literature and lm, but it was Henriette Mueller-Stahl of Birkhäuser who helped me to evolve the proposal into reality. Tim Benton and Caroline Maniaque gave me support with various funding bids. Paul Richens of the University of Bath, with his typ ical generosity and style, introduced me to Maureen Thomas of Camb ridge University’s Moving Image Studio (as it was then) who – together wi th Ludvig Lohse, Monika Koeck, Richard Koeck, Philip Prager and Terence Wright – provided us – then students and staff of the Bath MArch – with a revelatory introduction to the possibilities of lm making. One of these students, Dan Moor, then fed me with further books as he continued his research in this area, as did another Bath student Anthony Bowles who also gave me important inspiration at a critical moment. At the same time Dyfed Grifths and Martin Gledhill bought me time to write by being, as ever, the most generous and tolerant of teachers.
Anne Sam uel was very good company while I recorded case study buildings in Paris. Michel R ichard of the Fondation Le Corbusier gave me access to the Maison La Roche whilst it was being renovated and Arnaud Dercelles helped me with the p rovision of illustrations. Once again Denise Leitao took me around the Maison du Brésil, helping me pick chives from its extraordinary roofscape.
Funding for the use of images came from the British Academy. In Cardiff Stephen Kite allowed me use of his photographs of the Usine Duval which was inaccessible to visitors while I was writing this text. Sam Austin, Steve Coombs and E d Wainwright worked on the production of the drawings. Marie Gastinel Jones once again helped me with translation and my negotiations with the francophone world. Adam Sharr made extremely useful comments about the manuscript at various stages in its production as did P eter Blundell Jones at the University of Shefeld School of A rchitecture. It was here that Peter Lathey helped me to gather together illustrations. Indeed all the staff at Shefeld were extremely tolerant and supportive in enabling me to nish this book just at the point at which I was precipitated into Headship of this extraordinarily innovative and exciting school. To all these people I owe my thanks.
It is important here to mention Sarah Menin who worked with me on our rst b ook and who would be outshining us all now if circumstances had been different. And nally, my centre of gravity, my family without which none of this would have been possible.
Shefeld 2010 2010
Table of Contents
Introduction
9
Part 1 – Initiation 1. Synchronisation of the Senses
27
Rhythms of the Body
27
Scale
29
Music
30
Light
32
Colour
35
Sensory Stimulation
35
Conclusion
39
2. The Evocation of Sp ace and Time
41
Perspective
41
Framing
49
Resistance
50
Time and Progress
54
Conclusion
58
3. Ordering Initiation
61
Rhetoric
63
Montage
68
Transcending Time
69
Orphic Initiation
71
The Alchemical Journey
74
The Oracle of the Holy Bottle
76
La Sainte Baume
77
Conclusion
81
Part 2 – Solid Words: The Rhetoric of Architecture 4. Elements of the Architectural Promenade
85
Threshold or Introduction
85
Sensitising Vestibule
90
Questioning – savoir – savoir habiter
92
Reorientation
92
Culmination
100
Conclusion
100
5. The Jacob’s Ladder Type Promenade
103
MAISON LA ROCHE 1923–24
103
Threshold
105
Sensitising Vestibule
106
Questioning – savoir – savoir habiter
108
Reorientation
111 111
Culmination
112 112
Summary
112 112
VILLA SAVOYE 1929–31
114 114
Threshold
114 114
Sensitising Vestibule
118 118
Questioning – savoir – savoir habiter
119 119
Reorientation
122
Culmination
122
Summary
125
Conclusion
126
6. Overlapping Narratives of Domestic Space
129
PENTHOUSE, FLAT 7, 24 RUE NUNGESSER ET COLI 1933
129
Threshold
130
Sensitising Vestibule
132
Questioning – savoir – savoir habiter
132
Reorientation
139
Culmination
139
Summary
142
MAISON JAOUL B 1955–57
144
Threshold
146
Sensitising Vestibule
146
Questioning – savoir – savoir habiter
146
Reorientation
153
Culmination
154
Summary
156
Conclusion
156
7. Complex Narratives of Public Life
159
USINE DUVAL 1946–51
159
Threshold
161
Sensitising Vestibule
161
Questioning – savoir habiter
163
Reorientation
164
Culmination
166
Summary
168
MAISON DU BRÉSIL 1957–59
171
Threshold
171
Sensitising Vestibule
174
Questioning – savoir habiter
178
Reorientation
184
Summary
184
LA TOURETTE 1956–59
186
Threshold
188
Sensitising Vestibule
188
Questioning – savoir habiter
191
Summary
203
Conclusion
204
Conclusion
207
Appendix
Selected Bibliography
213
Index
219
Illustration Credits
223
0.1 Unité d’Habitation Marseilles, door fro m hall at piloti level (1952).
Introduction
The “promenade architecturale” is a key term in the language of modern architecture. It appears for the rst time in Le Corbusier’s description of the Villa Savoye at Poissy (1928) where i t supercedes the term “circulation”, so often used in his early work. 1 “In this house occurs a veritable promenade architecturale, offering aspects constantly varied, unexpected and sometimes astonishing.” 2 Taken at a basic level the promenade refers, of course, to the experience of walking through a building. Taken at a deeper level, like most things Corbusian, it refers to the complex web of ideas that underpins his work, most specically his belief i n architecture as a form of initiation. Le Corbusier’s prime objective was to assist people in the process of savoir habit er , knowing how to live.3 “I know that here I am on the essential theme, the great modern theme: HABITATION.”4 Put simply this meant understanding and fully appreciating what he perceived to be the important things in lif e.5 Knowing how to live is the fundamental question before modern society, everywhere, in the whole world. An ingenuous question and one that could be considered childish. How to live? Do you know reader? Do you know how to live soundly, strongly, gaily, free of the hundred stupidities established by habit, custom and urban disorganization?
6
The promenade would be designed to resensitise people to their surroundings, leading ultimately to a realignment with nature.7 “You enter: the architectural spectacle at once offers itself to the eye. You follow an itinerary and the perspectives develop with great variety, developing a play of light on the walls or making pools of shadow,” the purpose of all this being to help us “learn at the end of the day to appreciate what is available”.8 There was nothing arbitrary about the way in which the sequence unfolded. Le Corbusier wrote “in respect of our work, of human labour, of the human world, nothing exists or has the right to exist, that has no explanation”.9 At the Swiss Pavilion (193 0–32), for example, the “greatest care was taken over the smallest detail,
1
“Circulation” is particularly prevalent in Precisions where a section of a chapter is devoted to the subject. Le Corbusier, Precisions, p.128–133.
2
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Œuvre Complète Volume 2, 1929–1934 (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1995), p.24.
3
Le Corbusier, The Marseilles Block (London: Harville, 1953), p.34. Originally published as L’Unité d’habitation de Marsei lle (Mulhouse: Editions Le Point, 1950). See also “Eyes that do not see” in Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (London: Architectural Press, 1982), p.9. Originally publi shed as Vers une Architecture (Paris: Crès, 1923), p.9.
4
Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals were White (New York: Reynal Hitchcock, 1947), p.xviii. Originally p ublished as Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches
5
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p.23.
6
Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals were White, p.xvii.
7
See Sarah Menin and Flora Samuel, Nature and Space: Aalto and Le Corbusier (London: Routledge, 2003) for an exploration of what nature meant to Le
8
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Œuvre Complète Volume 1, 1910–1929 (Zuri ch: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1995), p.60. Originally publ ished in 1937.
(Paris: Plon, 1937).
Corbusier. Translati on from T. Benton, The Villas of Le Corbusier 1920–1930 (London: Yale, 1987), p.4. 9
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today (London: Architectural Press, 1987), p.163. Originally published as L’Art décoratif d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Editions Crès, 1925), p.165.
9
visible as well as hidden”.10 In terms of meaning, the Chapel at Ronchamp (1950–54) was, similarly, the result of “meticulous research”.11 As André Wogenscky, his chef d’atelier, wrote of Le Corbusier, “as soon as he draws an architectural form in space, h e imparts to it an element of meaning”.12 I am going to explore the possibility that, like many other aspects of Le Corbusier’s architecture, the promenade followed a formula, adjusted slightly each time to t in with the demands of site and programme, but similar in every case. I will argue that it followed a pattern, a particular series of stages and will show how these were reinforced through the use of detail. In the course of this argument I shall examine the cornu copia of sources that informed Le Corbusier’s thinking on the structure of experience, in art, religion, rhetoric, lm, literature and elsewhere. Central to all of this is Le Corbusier’s concept of radiance developed in the 1933 book La Ville Radieuse which, if examined closely, is more of a theogony than a town planning guide. “Therefore, radiant, therefore ineffable, this total potential with banal materials to make our cities, our homes, our houses and our countrysides, the modern world ‘radiant’.”13 A radiant building, object or work of art would inuence everything around it as in the case of the Parthenon, which Le Corbusier described as generating “l ines spurting, radiating out as if produced by an explosion”. 14 Radiant architecture would impose its inuence upon the surroundings. It would be connected with other edices and things, both old and new, built in the same spirit and with the same sensitivity to geometry. Furthermore, architecture could be “made radiant” through the use of the Modulor.15 Taking inuence from day to day observations of the world around him; the measurement of cars, boats, buildings; technology and science; ancient religion and philosophy; art, nature an d, of course the body, the aim of the Modulor was to facilitate standardisation and eliminate waste. 16 But it had another more subtle purpose, that of bringing people together in close community with their environment, linked together through the harmonious possibilities of number. More than just a system of proportion, it was fundamental to the creation of what Le Corbusier called ineffable space, “ashes of fundamental truth” that were “an authentic fact of religion”.17 Within the pages of Le Poème de l’angle droit , the book that reects more closely than any other text the workings of Le Corbusier’s inner world, found objects – stones and bones – develop faces
( Fig. 0.2) .
They
begin to communicate. They are radiant. 18 Connected with other things and buildings, both old and new, built in the same spirit and with the same sensitivity to geometry, they impose their inuence upon their
10
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Œuvre Complète Volume 2, p.16.
11
Le Corbu sier, The Chapel at Ronchamp (London: Architectural Press, 1957), p.6.
12
André Wogenscky, introduction to Le Corbusier, Le poème de l’angle droit (Paris: Fondation Le Corbusier, 1989), n. p.
13
Le Corbusie r, “Où est-on 26 ans après la Charte d’Athènes,” May–J une 1962, 18 pp. Typed ms. (unpubli shed, intende d for M.P. Delou vrie r’s book Le
14
Le Corbus ier, Modulor 2 (London: Faber, 1955), p.26. Originally pub lished as Le Modulor II (Paris: Editions d’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1955).
15
Ibid., p.306.
16
J. Soltan, “Working with Le Corbusier” in H. Allen Brookes (ed.), The Le Corbusier Archive, Volume XVII, (New York: Garland, 1983), pp.ix–xxiv (p.xviii ).
17
Le Corbu sier, Modulor (London: Faber, 1954). Originally published as Le Modulor (Paris: Editions d’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1950), p.220.
18
Le Corbu sier, Modulor 2, p.306.
District de Paris), p.14, Fondation Le Corbusier (hereafter referred to as FLC) A3 01 365.
Hereafter referred to as Allen Brooks, Archi ve XVII.
10
n o i t c u d o r t n I
0.2 Drawing of a stone from Le Corb usier, Le Poème de l’angle dro it (1955).
surroundings. “Let me recall to your mind that man seated at his table… The furniture, the walls, the openings to the outside… all speak to him.” 19 The building here offers structure to the narrative and acts as a protagonist in its drama. 20 If a radiant edice, such as the Parthenon, was for Le Corbusier “spurting” lines out to the horizon,21 what does this mean for the promenade? Where indeed does it begin and end? Wendy Redeld has illustrated how historians have largely ignored the issue of site in their accounts of Le Corbusier’s work22 while Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn have written convincingly about the need to be critical of the traditional view that the site ends at the limits of the building plot, recognising that boundaries are never xed and suggesting that it is more accurate to think of site as a network, a territory inuenced by the act of designing in a specic place.23 The limitations of the site are more clearly dened in Le Corbusier’s early work, but are less obvious in the case of a piloti building like the Unité 24 where the reduction of tangible boundaries between inner and outer worlds is likely to have been a conscious decision. Here the promenade creates a public continuum from ground to roof, a quasi exterior route through the building, its progress interrupted by the most minimal of glass doors at ground level ( Fig. 0.3) . These cause a blurring of interior and exterior space, pulling the exterior
route into the house and up to the rooftop garden.
19
Le Corbus ier, Talks with Students (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), p.54. Originall y published as Entretien avec les étudiants des écoles
20
Sergei Eisenstein, Yves-Alain Bois, Michael Glenny, “Montage and Architecture”, Assemb lage, 10 (1989), p.113. “The building itself is allowed to make the
d‘architecture (Paris: De noel, 1943). film” as Le Corbusier wrote of a documentary that was made about the Unité in Mar seilles. Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète Volume 5, 1946–1952 (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1973). Originally published in 1953. p.10. 21 22
Le Corbu sier, Modulor 2, p.26. W. Redfield, “The Suppressed Site: Revealing the influence of site on two purist works” in C. J. Burns and A. Kahn, Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histo ries an d Strateg ies (London: Routledge, 2005), pp.185–222.
23
Ibid.
24
W. Curti s, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986), p.81. Benton notes that in one of the earlier versions of the scheme a concrete triumphal arch spanned the dri veway at lodge level. Benton, The Villas, p.181.
11
16
n o i t c u d o r t n I
0.5 Eye in sketch by Le Corbusier from Poésie sur Al ger (1950). 0.6 Ideal Home Exhibition i n London (1938–1938)] from the Œuvre Complète.
17
6.1 Vault in the s tudio o f the pent house, 24 Rue N ungesse r et Coli .
6. Overlapping Narratives of Domestic Space
In the last chapter I described the evolution of the Jacob’s ladder route in Le Corbusier’s domestic work culminating in the Villa Savoye, where the journey from earth to sky can be felt most clearly. This chapter focuses on the development of this topos in two vaulted schemes, the penthouse at 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli and the Maison Jaoul B. In the former the volumes work across the grain of the vaults resulting in a more stuttering sensation of space than that in the latter where the promenade is in the same direction as the vault itself. The task here is to contain the relentless ow of movement. Mapping the routes through these buildings against the stages of Le Corbusier’s dramatic arc reveals a growing complexity in his thinking about what the promenade might actually be.
PENTHOUSE, FLAT 7, 24 RUE NUNGESSER ET COLI 1933 Home to Le Corbusier and his wife Yvonne, the penthouse at 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli occupies the two top oors of his Porte Molitor Block in the Auteuil district of Paris ( Fig. 6.2) . The apartment dates from the same period that Le Corbusier was developing ideas for La Ville Radieuse and should be seen as an i ncrement of that plan which he wrote of in terms of a balance between masculine and feminine elements. This prodi gious spe ctacle has b een produ ced by the inter play of two ele ments, one mal e, one female: su n and water. Two contradictor y element s that both need th e other to exist…
1
Adhering to old stereotypes2 Le Corbusier dened “male” architecture as “strong objectivity of forms, under the intense light of a Mediterranean sun”, while “female” architecture was described in terms of “limitless subjectivity rising against a clouded sky”, 3 in other words, something more nebulous.4 Le Corbusier’s architecture became a marriage of these two opposites, in alchemical terms, a highly charged and erotic interplay intended to work upon the inhabitant through what he called a “psychophysiology” of the feelings. 5 At 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli he created a dwelling for the man and woman of the “machine age”, mirroring and reinforcing the interplay of the masculine and feminine life within the apartment.6
1
Le Corbus ier, The Radiant City (London, Faber, 1967), p.78. Originally published as La Ville Radieuse (Paris: Editions de l’Architecture d’Au-jourd’hui, 1935).
2
See “On Difference: Masculine and Feminine” in A. Forty, Words and Buildings (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), pp.42–61 for a dis cussion of the
3
Le Corbusier, Modulor (London: Faber, 1954), p.224. Originally published as Le Modulor (Pari s: Editions d’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1950).
4
Pearson writes of the way in which Le Corbusier distributed gendered artworks within his clients’ houses, for example in the Villas Stein and Mandrot. “At
enduring tendency to see architecture in terms of gender.
the Mandrot villa… the association of the female form wi th passivity and nature and the male form with a more active dominance of its surroundings is more typical of Le Cor busier’s masculinist symbology.” Pearson,“Integrations of Art and Architecture in the Work of Le Corbusier ”, PhD thesis, Stanford University (1995), p.139. 5
Le Corbusier, Modulor , p.113.
6
See Flora Samuel, “Animus, Anima and the Architecture of Le Corbusier”, Harvest , 48, 2 (2003), pp.42–60 for a Jungian interpretation of this argument.
129
6.2 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
6.3 Front door at ground level of 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
Threshold
To reach Rue Nungesser et Coli, most appropriately named after a well-known aviator, you emerge from the metro at Auteuil, as Le Corbusier would have done on his way home f rom work, cross a series of large boulevards and skirt around a sports stadium before arriving in this quiet street of apartment blocks. Access to the penthouse and the other apartments in the building, is achieved via a delicious bronze handle set into an oversized metal door
( Fig. 6.3) .
The façade of the building onto the street appears entirely orthogonal yet
the mat well is skewed slightly so that, even when one is standing at the front door, subliminal messages are received about the direction of the route through the building via the feet and eyes. The l ofty communal hall ( Fig. 6.4) is dissected by a warped line of columns that slurp the reader between curved walls towards the
mirrored lift shaft, through a door, over an odd little stream of glass block
( Fig. 6.5) and
into the dark and
7
deeply ordinary Parisian light well upon which all the vertical circulation is situated. From here the reader curls and recurls up the highly constrained dogleg stair to arrive at the top, a dizzy pilgrim at a door which is marked only by a stencilled number 7 ( Fig. 6.6) . It can be no accident, given that the at belonged to a deeply superstitious man who always sat in the same seat number on aeroplanes, that it is numbered 7. Like Le Poème de l’angle droit the building has seven layers, seven signifying the union of body and spirit, in other
words harmony.
7
Debor ah Gans notes that the placement of structur e at the centre of the build ing is a strategy adopted in the Maison Cook and elsewhe re, but wherea s “at Cook the circulation adapts to the column location, at Porte Molitor the demands of the promenade appear to warp the column line. The entrance is shifted in relation to the center column; but on the interior, the lobby columns appear staggered along the path.” Gans, The Le Corbusier Guide (New York: Princeton
130
Archi tectural Press, 20 06), p.61.
e c a p S c i t s e m o D f o s e v i t a r r a N g n i p p a l r e v O
6.4 Interior of hall of 24 Rue Nungesser et Co li (1933).
6.5 Bottom of the stair in the lightwell of
6.6 Gallery from which the penthouse is
24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
accessed, 24 Rue Nungesser et Co li (1933).
0
1
2
3
4
5
10 m
6.3 Plan at ground floor level of 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
131
0
1
2
3
4
5
10 m
6.7 Section across Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
Sensitising Vestibule
Like the Maison La Roche, the apartment is entered at the hinge of two very different zones, each celebrated with a vault, one devoted to Le Corbusier’s own studio, the other to living and dining
(Figs. 6.7 and 6.8) .
Each is
hidden by a vast pivoting door. The side facing into the living room is black, the other side cream, as bets the spaces to which they are dedicated. The odd skewed wall in a deep blue that greets the reader upon entry encourages movement towards the living rooms as do the attractive qualities of the bright red replace beyond
(Fig. 6.9) .
When open, the pivoting door into Le Corbusier’s studio contributes to this funnelling of
space which is further reinforced by the sweep of the side of the spiral staircase and transition zone created by the doorway of the living room. Questioning – savoir habiter
Here the third stage of Le Corbusier’s narrative arc, a space for questioning, is taken to new extremes. In chapter 4 I mentioned Le Corbusier’s fondness for the split screen format used by the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca ( Fig. 4.5) . This split screen is used i n several of the photos of the penthouse in the Œuvre Complète, but the one that is particularly signicant is a carefully choreographed view of the replace in the
main living room which would be encountered immediately on entry into the apartment
( Fig. 6.10) .
In this case
two thirds of the image is devoted to th e replace, whilst the nal third is of Le Corbusier and Yvonne standing on the balcony beyond in a dialogue of then and now. The foreground of the living room photo is occupied by a rectangular nich e containing three very anthropomorphic “primitive” objects. They are on the same level as the gures of Yvonne and Le Corbusier and seem to be of the same stature. To the left of the niche, lit by the sun is a rotund pot, highly reminiscent of an ancient fertility goddess. She is in distinct contrast with the dark gure of Le Corbusier to the left of the balcony, yet she seems in some way connected to him, perhaps as an expression of his other side. The shady priapic statuette on the right appears to have a similar correspondence with the gure of Yvonne. The sunlight falling on the feminine pot evokes the Apollonian light of reason, while the darkness that falls on the little phallus is distinctly chthonic and feminine. Each object forms a tiny marriage of opposites by itself. Between them sits a block of black basalt, a play on the theme of the philosopher’s stone. It seems no accident that they are surrounded in red, used by Le Corbusier as the colour of fusion in Le Poème de l’angle droit . 132
e c a p S c i t s e m o D f o s e v i t a r r a N g n i p p a l r e v O
0
1
2
3
4
5
10 m
6.8 Plan of penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
6.9 View fr om stud io, thr ough hall t o firep lace and di ning space beyond of the Penthouse (1933).
133
6.11 Photograph of “Exhibitio n of Art So Called ‘Primitive’” (1935)
6.12 A painti ng by Le Corb usier, a stat ue by Lauren s, a tapes try by L éger
held in the Penthouse from the Œuvre Complète.
and other objects that evoke a poetic reaction in the “Exhibition of Art So Called ‘Primitive’” (1935) held in the Penthouse from t he Œuvre Complète.
The union of opposites is reiterated in the orthogonal aperture of the black replace where feminine darkness is framed by a masculine geometry and in the black and white fu r of the organic animal skin in front of it, which lies, i n turn, on the cold industrial tiles of the oor.8 Then we notice the contrast between these at shiny tiles and the matt warmth of the shadowy round vaults of the ceiling above. Light and dark, vertical and horizontal, geometric and organic, the contrasts permeate Le Corbusier’s work of this period. As Le Corbusier wrote of the Unité in Marseilles, “I will create beauty by contrast, I will nd the opposite element, I will establish a dialogue between the rough and the nished, between precision and accident, between the lifeless and the intense and in this way I will encourage people to observe and reect.” 9 This then was one of the tactics used by Le Corbusier f or the promotion of savoir hab iter within the temple of his own family. In 1935 in a peculiar blurring of public and private, an “Exhibition of Art So Called ‘Primitive’” was held in the Nungesser et Coli penthouse.10 Although ostensibly curated by Louis Carré, there is much of Le Corbusier in the layout of the pieces. The black and white photographs depicting the exhibition in the Œuvre Complète reveal much about the way Le Corbusier played with texture, colour and narrative to create over-
laps across time as well as space. In Le Corbusier’s studio a plaster cast of an early Greek statue of a man carrying a calf – colourfully painted by Le Corbusier – merges into the rough stone wall behind while its contours are echoed in the Aubusson Carpet that hangs upon the wall, a design by Fernand Léger 11
“Full, empty, light, matter: a tapestry of Léger, a statue by Laurens.” In this photo
( Fig. 6.12) the
( Fig. 6.11) .
curved arm
of Le Corbusier’s painting is echoed by Laurens’ statue and the Léger behind, as if part of the same composition. In an echo of the replace photograph discussed earlier ( Fig. 6.10) a bronze gurine from Benin sits atop a brick creating a diagonal slash of space from high to low that is itself echoed by the diagonal of light that washes
8 9
Pearson writes of Le Corbus ier’s habit of “superi mposing organic forms over an organis ing grid”. Pearson, “Integratio ns of Art and Architecture”, p.312. Ibid., p.190.
10
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Œuvre Complète Volume 3, 1934–38 (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1945), pp.156–157. Originally published in
11
Ibi d., p.157.
1938.
134
e c a p S c i t s e m o D f o s e v i t a r r a N g n i p p a l r e v O
6.10 Carefully composed shot of living room of the Penthouse from the Œuvre Complète.
6.13 Anothe r fire place com posi tion in t he “Exhibition of Art S o Called ‘Primitive’” (1935) held in the Penthouse from the Œuvre Complète.
across the frame, past a vast stone from a British beach, extending towards an ancient Greek statue of a woman
( Fig. 6.13) .
It occupies the foreground, disturbing the delicate balance of near and far in this place.
Games are played in the distribution of artefacts within Le Corbusier’s own home, not only to alter our perception of space, but this time to collapse our sense of time – the many centuries that separate the ancient statue and that of Laurens, and of culture, the many miles travelled by the Benin gurine. The exhibition seems to encapsulate the belief, mentioned in chapter 4, that it is the job of the poet to transcend limitations of time. Although a concrete-framed building with minimal n on-load bearing partitions, the at, described by Peter Carl as a “museum cave”, feels anything but imsy.12 Close inspection of the thresholds between the key spaces reveals why this is the case. The frames of the vast doors, often surmounted by a shelf, are given a depth quite disproportionate to the lightweight walls that they inhabit, as they mark the points between
12
P. Carl, “Le Corbusier’s Penthouse in Paris: 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli”, Daidalos, 28 (1988), pp.65–75.
135
6.14 Developmental plan of threshold b etween the dining space and the bedroo m of the Penthouse showing the introduction of a small lobby, FLC 13784.
distinct zones of activity. The thresholds marking the ends of the vaults are particularly deep. Developmental drawings indicate that Le Corbusier wanted to nd a way to give emphasis to one such threshold, that between the dining room and hi s and Yvonne’s bedroom ( Fig. 6.14) .13 However, the solution to this problem did not lie so much in plan as in section where manipulations at the high level of shelf, shadow, frame and vault give strong sensation of depth ( Fig. 6.15) . Nowadays a large wardrobe on ru mbling castors swings round
with maximum drama to create a door nearly a metre in girth.
( Figs. 6.16 and 6.17)
In the deepest recesses of the bedroom itself is an alcove devoted to washing
(6 on Fig. 6.8) .
Here the view is
frustrated by a glass block window, the only view being that into the small circular mirror which Le Corbusier would look at himself while he shaved ( Fig. 6.18) . On the other side of the penthouse in the studio wing
( Fig. 6.19) ,
hidden by a wall of pigeonholes is Le Corbusier’s own inner sanctum, the little desk where he wrote and thought ( Fig. 6.20) .
(5 on Fig. 6.8) .
As at his sink, light pours in through the glass blocks but there is nothing to look at
There are no easy answers or conspicuously framed views, only incitements to further introspection.
The reader must therefore return to the spiral stair with which this account begins.
13
136
Fondation Le Corbusier (herea fter referred to as FLC) 13784 in H. Allen Brookes (ed.), The Le Corbusier Archi ve, Volumes XI, p.231. Hereafter referred to as Allen Br ookes, Archive XI.
e c a p S c i t s e m o D f o s e v i t a r r a N g n i p p a l r e v O
6.16 Wardrobe door into Le Corbusier ’s and Yvonne’s bedroom, the Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Co li (1933). 6.15 Deep threshold in the Penthouse, Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
0
1m
6.17 Plan of the threshold bet ween the dining room and Le Corbusier’s and Yvonne’s bed room, t he Penthou se, 24 Rue Nunge sser et Co li (1933).
137
6.20 Le Corbusier at his desk in t he Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933). 6.18 Le Corbusier’s shaving mirror in t he Penthouse, Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
6.19 Le Corbusier’s studio in t he Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933). The alcove to the
138
desk is to the left, the basin in the centre.
e c a p S c i t s e m o D f o s e v i t a r r a N g n i p p a l r e v O
0
1
2
3
4
5
10 m
6.21 Plan of the roof garden of the Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
Reorientation
Guarded by a series of “objects that provoke a poetic reaction” the spiral stair in the vestibule is painted black on its outer edges, but its treads are light, illuminated from above. The circle of the stair contrasts with the square space within which it sits, again in a play of opposites – the special qualities of each form felt most strongly when set against the other
( Fig. 6.21) .
It has no guard rail, just a simple pole at the centre of the
spiral, meaning that it has much of the quality of one of Le Corbusier’s precarious stairs, designed to awaken a consciousness of space and of danger ( Fig. 6.22) giving access to the spare bedroom and the tiny roof garden above ( Fig. 6.22) . Culmination
In the photos in the Œuvre Complète, emphasis is placed upon the view across the lantern to the roof garden, which itself acts as a frame for views of th e sky, but there is a conspicuous l ack of climax to the route, beyond the overwhelming sensation of light and space that occurs in any rooftop haven. The view instead is bounced back into the boundaries of the little, seemingly square, garden contributing strongly to the hermetic sense of the whole. 14( Fig. 6.23) The penthouse at 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli was built at a point of transition in Le Corbusier’s architecture between the “white” buildings of his early career and the l ater more brutalist work. It also marks a transition in his thinking on the promenade, heralding a tendency that would reach its most extreme expression in La Tourette, in which the aim is to create continuity with the inner world of the people who live there. The penthouse is entered upon a hinge. From here two equal but opposing routes can be accessed, one through the living space and one through the studio, each given a staccato rhythm by the beams of the
14
See for an expansi on of this discussio n Flora Samuel, “Le Corbus ier, Women, Nature and Culture”, Issues in Art and Architecture, 5, 2 (1998), pp.1–17.
139
140
6.22 Staircase up to roof garden of the Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
e c a p S c i t s e m o D f o s e v i t a r r a N g n i p p a l r e v O
6.23 The roof garden of t he Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
141
vaults overhead. Both come to a dead end, forcing the reader back to the entrance hall where he or she began. The culminating route up the spiral stair to the roof garden lacks the focus of the Villa Savoye and offers limited possibilities of release. Summary
Le Corbusier thought of himself as a monk, Père Corbu, living with the spiritual torment and anguish that he believed to be the key elements of monastic existence, but without the intolerable constraints of celibacy. The promenade of the penthouse at 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli follows the ve-part narrative up to a point, its rhetoric seemingly directed at his wife Yvonne who preferred her old home, 23 Rue Jacob. Here, as will be seen in La Tourette and indeed Le Poème de l’angle droit – which is, after all about his relationship with his wife – the drama is internalised, cyclical and has no easy ending. Perhaps ironically Yvonne ended her days a near prisoner as, being lame in the extreme, she was unable to climb down the stairs to the outer world, unable or unwillin g to appreciate the promenade Le Corbusier had intended. Late in lif e Le Corbusier acknowledged this, reecting with deep regret that he had “kept her in a box”. 15
142
15
Jane Drew interv iewed by Margare t Garla ke, 20–21 May 1995, National Life Story Collection, British Librar y, F823.
e c a p S c i t s e m o D f o s e v i t a r r a N g n i p p a l r e v O
6.24 Isometric drawing showing elements of t he architectural promenade of t he Penthouse, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (1933).
143
LA TOURETTE 1956–59 The Monastery of La Tourette is a reinterpretation of the rules of the Dominican Order established at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Penance through “regular observance” is central to the Dominican way of life, which requires the rigorous discipline of unruly desires for pleasure and comfort, and a concentration on the mission of the Order, spreading the word within a communal setting.32 In chapter 3 I noted Elie Faure’s belief that numbers played an important role in controlling the excesses of mankind. It is this taming of desire that, I argue, is absolutely key to the promenade of La Tourette. Giving some clues as to its underlying ambition Le Corbusier wrote that it “involves the presence of fundamentally human elements in the ritual as well as in the di mensioning of the spaces (rooms and circulation)”.33 Le Corbusier included a plan of a traditional Dominican monastery in the Œuvre Complète ( Fig. 7.34) . He makes the point, slightly disingenuously, that it would be impossible to buil d a traditional cloister on a sloping site such as that at La Tourette. This is spurious as such cloisters have, in the past, been built in all manner of places.34 The topographical issue is used as an excuse to separate out parts of the programme, creating points of tension in between them and in doing so producing a promenade much more evocative of what he saw as the contradictions and difculties of monastic existence. At La Tourette there is a cloister, yet there is no cloister. Traditionally this paradisiacal garden is enclosed and protected by the ecclesiastical buildings within which it sits but, in this case, the cloister is left open allowing the rough hillside to come tumbling through the building, subverting any possibility of cloister implied by the form of the buildings above ( Fig. 7.35) . “The monastery is posed in the savage nature of the forest and grasslands which is independent of the architecture itself.”35 Le Corbusier talks in embattled terms of the position of the building within raw nature, as though it and the people wi thin were desperately building barrages against it all . The study rooms, work and recreation halls, as well as the library occupy the upper levels. Further down are layers of monk cells. Below this are the refectory and the cloister in the form of a cross leading to the Church. “And then come the piles carrying the four convent buildings rising from the slope of the terrain left in its original condition without terracing”.36 Some of the support structures bear an uncanny similarity to roots, meaning that the undercroft of the building feels like nothing so much as a tree partially tor n up by its roots, again evoking nature at its least benign
186
( Fig. 7.36) .
32
www.curi a.op.org/en/ accesse d 17 June 2009.
33
Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète Volume 6, p.42.
34
Indeed he originally admired the Acropolis for its use of plinths on an awkward site. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p.43.
35
Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète Volume 7, 1957–1965 (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1995), p.32. Originall y published in 1965.
36
Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète Volume 6, p.42.
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
7.35 La Tourette (1956–59).
7.34 Diagram of a Dominican monastery from the Œuvre Complète.
7.36 Rootlike foundations at La Tourette (1956–59).
187
Threshold
Approaching along the leafy lane from the car park the blank wall of the Church, anked by a much lower piano-shaped saddlebag of chapels, is the rst part of the monastery to become visible in what Rowe describes as “some very private commentary upon Acropolitan material”
( Fig. 7.37) .
37
The Church itself has two
sides and two entrances: one for the monks within, and one for the public wi thout. As the reader rounds the corner of the Church, the angular thrust of th e belfry comes into view. Here the fondness for anthropomorphism so evident at Ronchamp comes once more into play. Woman is evoked in the gable of the Church where she extends her cape over the gathered ock as in Piero della Francesca’s Madonna della Misericordia (1462)
( Fig. 7.38) or
indeed the veiled woman that appears so frequently in his work, for example in the
“labyrinth” section of Le poème de l’angle droit ( Fig. 2.21) , but she is left behind by the reader progressing steadily onwards. Le Corbusier, when at Mount Athos as a young man, dwelt on the impossibility of an existence without women – “thus everything is missing here in the East where only for the sight of her woman is the primordial ingredient”.38 The theme then in the approach to La Tourette seems to me to be the relinquishing of the body, of human love, in favour of a more spiritual union, the difculties of which receive further expression in the design of the entrance. An early model of the building shows a wall along the alley, on the East side of the building, blocking views of the internal cloister. This would mean that the reader would have to walk a good way without much to look at before arriving at the portal that marks the entry into the complex, in this way heightening expectation of what is to come
( Fig. 7.39) .
Le Corbusier’s buildings often went over budget – the source of funds for La
Tourette being particularly restricted – the likely reason for the wal l not being built to ful l height. Its absence makes the choreography of views en route into the building more chaotic than usual causing what Colin Rowe calls the lack of “preface” to the composition. If built as originally in tended, the open portal would be set, like the doors in so many of Le Corbusier’s buildings, within a taut horizontal band of wall protecting the space within. As it is, the composition does feel odd. Sensitising Vestibule
The power of the open portal is reinforced by the contours of the land, meaning that it gives onto a space that is, in essence, a bridge spanning between two very different forms of existence
( Fig. 7.40) .
In the oor a
grating for the cleaning of shoes spans only half the width of the frame, as if waiting for a single le procession of monks. It is this – like so many of the spaces of monastic existence – both open to the air and under cover, that marks the vestibule of the building. The area protruding beyond the shade of the block is in essence a square, as is the space beneath it ( Fig. 7.41) , the pure form conferring a greater authority on the space than something more irregular. This vestibule space is occupied by a range of ve extraordinary biomorphic pavilions that house the porter’s lodge, the opulent curves of which are nished in a deep mottled gunnite plaster, similar to that of Ronchamp. Number ve, as was mentioned in chapter 3, corresponds to the ve senses. Lighting is brought into these bulbous forms through slots of red, which, as was seen in the previous
188
37
Colin Rowe, “La Tourette” in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa (Cambr idge MA : MIT, 1976), p.186.
38
Le Corbusier, Journey to the E ast (Cambridge MA: MIT, 1987), p.206. Originally publi shed as Le Voyage d’Orient (Paris: Parenthèses, 1887).
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
7.37 Side view of Church of La Tourette (1956–5 9) from the Œuvre Complète.
7.39 Model of La Tourette (1956–59) showing wall fr om the Œuvre Complète.
7.38 Piero d ella Francesca (1416–1492), Madonna della Miseric ordia (central detail ), tempera on panel (c.1462). Pinacoteca Comunale, Sansepolcro, BEN-F-001167-0000.
189
7.40 Open portal that marks the point of entry into La Tourette (1956–59).
01 2 345
10 m
7.41 Plan of La Tourette (1956–59) at entr y level.
7.43 Steep drop behind seat at entry to
190
7.42 Seat at entry to La Tourette (1956–59).
La Tourette (1956–59).
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
0 1 2 3 4 5
10 m
7.44 Section across La Tourette (1956–59).
case study, was for Le Corbusier the colour of the body and of fusion. The issue in the sensitising curves of the forecourt vestibule of La Tourette seems to be is the relinquishing of the sensual pleasure in favour of something more profound. The reader is inected from curve to curve along the axis of the bridge to a seat that hangs over the space of the cloister below
( Fig. 7.42) ,
the extreme use of what Geoffrey Baker calls “visual shock tactics”
( Fig. 7.43) .
39
Its presence invites the reader to pause and reect upon the implications of entry, of rebirth, through the violent red door of the monastery. To sit in this seat is to turn your back upon the difculties and dangers within the cloister, and to view the outer world once more
( Fig. 7.44) .
At this point Rowe observes:
The visitor is so placed that he is without the means of making coherent his own experie nce. He is made the subject of diametr ic excitations; his consciousness is divided; and, being both deprived of and also offered an architectural support, in order to resolve his predicament, he is anxious, indeed obliged – and without choice – to enter the building. 40
The door into the monastery is given signicance by its overpowering redness, but there is little else in its detail to indicate its import. Indeed there can be few more anticlimactic moments in the glossary of Le Corbusier’s architecture than arrival into what I will call the main stairwell of La Tourette (only because it appears near the main door – little else i n terms of detail marks its superior position in the hierarchy of stairs). Generally there seems to be no particular justication for the positioning of the staircases which are not equidistant from one another. Nor do they line up with any other major events in the plan. In this way Le Corbusier subverts many of the usual tricks used by architects in the name of legibility, good space planning, economy and delight – tricks that he himself was all too familiar with. Questioning – savoir habiter
There is no obvious pomp and ceremony in the architecture of La Tourette, just constant incitement to thought and reection. The main circulation corridor at the level of the alley provides access to the oratory, the library and a variety of other communal rooms. It swerves curiously from the inner edge of the cloister to the outer perimeter and back again. The view of the inner courtyard is experienced and once more taken away. The justication for this is unclear.
39
Geoffr ey Baker, Le Corbusier: An Analysis of Form (London: Taylor and Francis, 2001), p.307.
40
Colin Rowe, “La Tourette” in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa , p.188.
191
7.45 Circulation to the cells o f La Tourette from
7.46 Window baffle at La Tourette from
the Œuvre Complète.
interior (1956–59).
The circulation corridor at alley level, like that in the levels of monk’s cells below end where a window, presumably for air and light, is bafed
( Fig. 7.46) ,
( Fig. 7.45) nishes
in a dead
preventing the view outwards and for-
cing the reader to retrace their steps ( Fig. 7.47) . At very least it seems as though Le Corbusier would have been interested in creating a spiralling route around the building – in some places a spiralling motion can just be perceived – but this is broken down just as soon as it starts to get into motion. Within the main stairwell the nishes are rough and, as in much of the building, repulsive to the hand. Extremely low levels of articial illumination produce a distinctly crepuscular atmosphere at night. Nicholas Fox Weber writes of the “challenging” nature of the stairs that link the levels of the building.41 These long ights are of an unusually sharp incline. The spacing of the treads and risers is uncomfortable and physically demanding precisely because Le Corbusier wanted to bri ng focus back to the body as described in chapter 2. Further the centre wall of the dogleg is eroded at the lower level to make space for a vertical uorescent light bulb resulting in an odd sensation that the stair is somehow supported on this imsy column of light ( Fig. 7.48) .
The main stair feeds onto a corridor at base level
( Fig. 7.49) which
itself lines up with nothing in particular.42 It
cuts into the walkway that leads down to the Church, but it does not line up with the atrium as it could so very easily do. A further route leads on to the refectory, chapel and atrium, secondary to the corridor which slopes down to the Church which is framed in ondulatoire glazing devised by Iannis Xenakis and discussed in chapter 2 ( Fig. 7.50) . This gives a peculiar uctuating rhythm to the experience of space as it expands downwards towards the entrance to the Church.
192
41
N.F. Webe r, Le Corbusier: A Life (New York: Knopf, 2008), p.729.
42
There is a sub-route to the lower level of the Church at this point which is suppressed by various architectonic means meaning that the reader barely notices it.
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
01 2345
7.48 Low level light in stairway
10 m
7.47 Plan of La Tourette at the level of the monk’s cells (1956–59).
of La Tourette (1956–59).
01 2345
10 m
7.49 Plan at Church level of La Tourette (1956–59).
193
7.51 Handle of the door to the Church of La Tourette (1956–59).
7.52 Handle of the door within the door to the Church of La Tourette (1956–59).
The way is barred by a forbidding bronze door. It is facetted outwards like a jewel – its convex surface rebufng entry. The riveted surface, tarnished with time, resembles nothing so much as the side of a tank or some other instrument of war. The handles of Le Corbusier’s doors are generally a delight to touch, but not so in this case. Here a vertical slot frames a facetted back plate. To pull the door shut is to gain a precarious hold on the sharp rim of its opening. Abstract form and hard geometry afford nothing to the softness of the hand
( Fig. 7.51) .
To open the vast bronze door at the end of the corridor would involve considerable physical
effort. Even to open the little wicket gate within the door is difcult because of its extreme weight, and because of the high threshold that must be negotiated on entry ( Fig. 7.52) . Once within, it becomes apparent that there is no dramatic conclusion to the vista. The corridor that leads down to the Church lines up with nothing within it other than the side of the steps leading up to the main altar
( Fig. 7.53) .
This separates the territory of the monks from that of the main congregation who have their
own access door from the main alley. There is a further altar at the monks’ end of the Church which makes the priorities of the space yet more confusing. Added to this the extraordinary acoustic – a reverberation time of many, many seconds, sounds bouncing back from its deepest recesses – which stimulates questions 194
in the mind about the extent of this uncanny space.
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
7.50 Ondulatoires and door into t he Church of La Tourette (1956–59).
195
7.53 View towar ds main al tar of t he Church of L a Tourette (195 6– 59).
As at the Maison du Brésil the oor is nished in Le Corbusier’s opus optimum, meaning that the steps of the reader are continually mapped against the sequence of the Modulor. The traditional Dominican liturgy is characterised by its extensive use of bodily gestures: bowing, kneeling, prostrating, processing, all of which involve tactile engagement with the building where it takes place. When a Dominican monk prostrates himself on the Modulor oor of La Tourette its lines are imprinted on his body and he is absorbed into the radiant web of mathematical relationships that govern both the building and its environment. Particularly intriguing is the dark void at the end of the monks’ side of the Church ( Fig. 7.54) . Set into the wall, it is a geometric echo of the square in the ceiling above, which thi s time releases a blaze of light. It is almost as though projected from the dark square is the x-axis of the body set perpendicular to the y-axis of the spirit emanating from the hole in the roof above. All our movements are mapped within this grid. Le Corbusier wrote of Ronchamp that it involved the continual adjustment of a “thousand factors which in a true work, are all gathered and collected into a closely knit pattern – and even in the simple crossing of right angles, sign and symbol of an existence – these thousand factors about which no-one ought or would wish to speak of”.43 Here the right angle is implied within the architecture of the space. As Colin Rowe wrote of La Tourette, those “sceptical of the degree of contrivance” and “temperamentally predisposed to consider the game of hunt – the symbol as an overindulgence i n literature” really need to look at the architecture once more.44
196
43
Le Corbus ier, The Chapel at Ronchamp, p.6.
44
Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa , p.189.
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
7.54 View towar ds the mo nk’s side of t he Church of La Tour ette (195 6– 59).
197
7.55 Route to side chapel of the Church of La Tourette (1956–59) at high level.
198
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
7.56 The view down to the side chapels of the Church of La Tourette is suppressed by a yellow wall.
There are three key light sources in the Church. The slot in the wall in the more public end of the building, the square hole in the ceiling at the other end, an d the coloured circles set within the single-height space of the “piano”, the exterior form of which is the rst thing that the visitor sees on approach to the monastery up the alley. In order to reach this space it is n ecessary to step laboriously up and down over the corner of the main altar to its shelter
( Fig. 7.55) .
isingly into the chapels below
This more intimate area is pleasantly lit by the rooights that spill tantal-
( Fig. 7.56) .
Yet, totally frustratingly, they appear to be completely inaccessible
from within the Church itself. It is necessary instead to go back through the Church, back out of the door and left through the hidden door into the sacristy to nd a way down. From here a diminutive and highly compressed stairway leads through the bowels of the building into another chapel space and along a subterranean corridor to the piano-shaped side chapel. This bears an uncan ny resemblance both in its form and i n its relationship to the main Church, to the side chapel within the grotto at La Sainte Baume as it must have existed in Le Corbusier’s time and still exists today
( Fig. 7.57) .
At La Tourette seven private altars are set within the piano-shaped saddlebag of space
( Fig. 7.58) .
These are
stacked in steps up the slope yet, contrary to what one might expect, there is no hierarchical climax to the space (Fig. 7.59) . The topmost altars may be higher and wider but they receive no more light. The lowest altar is on its own giving it a certain importance but it is in a narrow gloomy corner. The top altar is coloured a
199
7.58 Lowest level side chapels at La Tourette (1956–59) looking towards subt erranean entrance corridor.
200
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
7.57 Side chapel to the grotto of Mary Magdalene at La Sainte Baume.
7.59 Looking up the lowest level side chapels at La Tourette (1956– 59).
201
202
7.60 Rooflight in the side chapels at La Tourette (1956–59).
bodily red while the bottom altar is a spiritual yellow, again contrary to expectations. Neither top nor bottom altar takes priority. In the dynamic equilibrium of this highly constrained space it is only the orbs of coloured light from the rooights above that offer the possibility of release
(Fig. 7.60) .
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
Here the nal two stages of Le
Corbusier’s dramatic arc, reorientation and climax, are conspicuous by their very absence. All that is left is the ceaseless chant of generations of monks circling in timeless perpetuity, a seeming dead end, forcing the journey of the spirit ever inward. Summary
“The composition of the convent starts at the summit and descends to the hollows of the valley in functional stages” writes Le Corbusier
( Fig. 7.61) .
45
It is traditional in architecture, including Le Corbusier’s architecture,
to progress upwards in pursuit of revelation. The opposite is the case in the early Christian catacombs in churches such as S. Clementi in Rome. Le Corbusier found within the roots of Christianity much in common with his own thinking on religion. Indeed the vertical journey excavated down into the most sacred parts of this building seems to echo Le Corbusier’s own researches through the layers of Catholic doctrine to something altogether more pure. Given Le Corbusier’s fondness for creating Jacob’s ladders, connections between earth and sky, and his association of the vertical with the spiritual, it seems odd that the culmination of the route in the Church happens in relative darkness at almost the lowest possible level. At La Tourette there are none of th e easy movements and obvious clues that populate Le Corbusier’s domestic work. Signicantly his rst instinct was to create, as was his wont, a dramatic denouement to the promenade up on the dazzling rooftop, but then he th ought again, restricting access to the roof, in doing so negating its role in the overall journey. “I think you’ve all been on the roof and you’ve seen how beautiful it is. It is beautiful because you don’t see it. You know, with me there will always be paradoxes… The pleasures of sky and clouds are perhaps too easy.”46 Instead Le Corbusier created sub-routes expressive of the inner turmoil and darkness (his Romantic roots emerge here with full force) of monastic existence. La Tourette is, like Le Poème de l’angle droit , the product of two contradictory journeys. One is painful and complex leading down into the recesses of the earth, the other prohibited, a more enticing route up to the delights of the roofspace. Here, for Rowe, “an architectural dialectician, the greatest, was to service the requirements of the archsophisticates of dialectic”, the Dominicans, hence the extraordinary tensions that are built into the programme.47
45
Le Corbus ier, Œuvre Complète Volume 7, p.37.
46
J. Petit, Un Couvent de Le Corbusier (Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1961), p.28.
47
Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa , p.194.
203
Conclusion
In this chapter I have illustrated the ways in which the basic narrative structure of the promenade architecturale – exhibited most clearly in the Villa Savoye – could be manipulated or even truncated to t in with the conceptual framework of these later more public schemes. This occurs most clearly at La Tourette where the promenade negates the usual narrative in an expression of the tortured life of a monk, and in the Maison du Brésil where the reader is left to absorb the watery and complex topography of the ground oor public space and Le Corbusier’s regret at his inability to build there. In the Usine Duval the promenade upwards works in opposition to the factory process down through the building in an opposing trafc of material and spiritual contrast.
204
e f i L c i l b u P f o s e v i t a r r a N x e l p m o C
7.61 Isometric of the elements of the promenade at La Tourette (1956–59).
205
